Ways of Dying in 1665

1944 I am always thankful for modern medicine. Especially - dentists! Can't imagine having to have all your teeth removed as the preferable alternative to having them rotting in your head.

I have no idea how my fingers did that, I can't even blame autocorrect, am on laptop for a change :o

I love 1066 and all that, I need to get another copy, I've lost mine.

My Granny used to love to tell me that when she was born nobody was expecting her (she was the second of twins) and she had to sleep in a drawer as there wasn't a cot.

Sad about the handwriting, other Granny wrote me a letter this week and her beautiful cursive handwriting has turned all spidery. Not a good sign....

Has anyone been to the Thackray museum in Leeds recently? I think it might be an interesting day out for small boys.

Turnpit sounds suitably medieval for this thread

SHIT!!!! TUNIP

Can't bloody type today. My fingers must have some kind of lurgy.

Turnpit I meant

Thank you Turnip

Loving this thread. DH has discovered Mumsnet though, i am not sure this is A Good Thing.

That's very sad about your G.Grandmother Graham, - I never knew that about stillborn babies not being recorded, - 1922 is shockingly recent

My grandmother's baby (my uncle Tom) survived and is now a strapping 81 year old , my mother (who would have been 8 at the time) remembers her mother being away for a long time when she was ill, and they couldn't visit her partly because she was too ill, but also because they lived in the North and Grandma was moved to Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London, which I think specialised in obstetrics.

Jux - not sure about that, rosebushes (for example) are exceedingly fond of a good dose of "blood and bone" so would grow quite happily (although not as big and certainly not tall enough).

In the days of tight corsetry to produce tiny waists, this may have contributed to some of the "childbed" deaths as well - women's internals were all squashed up and they couldn't breathe too well, so the effort required for childbirth may all have been too much for them. That and haemorrhages of course. And then the infections too.

Hilary Mantel The Giant, O'Brien

1066 and all that

Could I ask for a link to the Hilary something novel mentioned earlier, and the 1066 book?

DH has just ordered me ( What kind of relationship is this?) to mention the bit in Parson Woodforde where he cuts himself shaving and claps a moth to the wound to see if it would staunch the bleeding. For no apparent reason.

I had a GP once that collected old surgical instruments and had them on display in his consulting room. It was kind of off-putting.

"My grandmother was very ill after the birth of her first child with 'childbed fever' - in hospital for months - this was in 1930, - also known as puerperal fever, I think its a kind of infection. I think that was probably a common cause of death for women pre anti biotics."

It was indeed very common, sadly. Family rumour has it that my G G Grandmother died in childbirth in the late 1800s. Her death certificate states that she died of an infection, one which was often found in the womb of women who died following childbirth. I'll never know for sure as until around, IIRC, 1922, stillbirths weren't recorded. I've learned that stillborn babies would generally have been buried unrecorded with the mother if she also died or along with a stranger if the mother survived in circumstances where, as with my family, the bereaved didn't have enough money for a seperate funeral.

It's all very fascinating but terribly sad too.

I have had course of yew based chemotherapy. It certainly felt toxic.

There is a good museum at St James hospital in leeds. It has some really eyewatering old surgical instruments along with gruesome diagrams.

Tunip - it is sad isn't it? Like someone's mortalily played out through their writing . My Vicar obviously didn't keep up with his job towards the end. After his death is recorded there were a number of other deaths recorded post-dated!

Going back to the churchyard/yew tree thing, I thought it was practicality, as there was so much nitrate in the soil from the bodies that not much else would grow there happily? (Might not be nitrate, but something like that.)

Some baby deaths were recorded as Chrisoms. - death before baptism.

Mavis - I had a similar experience re handwriting.
My research subject had lovely clear handwriting most of the time. (And how I loved him for it . He drew funny cartoons in the margins, too!). But when he was very ill in the lead-up to his death, his writing got all scrawly and spidery. It was so, so sad! And the letters he wrote to his close friends knowing they would probably be the last....

Going back to the Bill of Mortality, it's interesting to see that there were 17 stillbirths (sadly, a number that hasn't reduced greatly today) but 42 deaths in 'childbed'. Does this suggest that childbirth was more dangerous for the mother than the baby at that time, or were the deaths of the babies either not recorded, or recorded under a different category?

Fascinating thread - I should have got on with so much stuff the last hour or so..

My only historical contribution was that years ago I was doing some research in our villages Book of the Dead. The vicar in the mid 19th century had dutifully written in all the parishes deaths, however after a time his hand writing got scratchier and scratchier, finally almost illegible. Then there was a discreet gap in the book and a new hand writes in the death of the vicar. And life goes on....

I fear I am not a person of Quality [commoner]